1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to data processing, and more particularly to improved processing of database queries.
2. Discussion of Related Art
In today's global economy, the ability of an enterprise to efficiently store, update, and use information can be critical to the enterprise's ability to serve its customers and compete in the marketplace. This information is often stored in databases, in the form of database objects such as data sets, tables, indices, or stored queries. A database system may maintain multiple versions of a data object. Multiple versions may be used for many different purposes, for example, for implementing temporal databases, to allow recovery after a system crash, to support alternative documents or designs, etc. When versions are used, however, every query to the database must include version information in order to ensure that the query is able to consistently access the same version. Thus, unless each database client adds version parameters to every query, queries will return incorrect results.